Thursday, November 19, 2009

Where in the world has Kez been?

All over the place!

Doing rounds to the cutest babies in the world down in the Ravine:

Taking stitches out of an old man's face:

Checking up on a badly infected finger:

Running clinic single-handedly in the city of Croix de Bouquets. I saw 345 patients in 4 days. Not only was the week very successful in terms of patient care, it also served as a publicity stunt to alert the neighborhood to the clinic's presence.

Helping at a feeding program on Delmas 75 with friends and students from Quisqueya Christian School. For everyone else, the feeding program consists of feeding little children. For me, it consists of cleaning dirty foot wounds and giving children my socks so they can keep the cuts clean.

Trying to find emergency treatment for this 14 year old boy. Bidlaire has bone cancer in his shoulder and the Haitian doctor who has been taking care of him predicts that without intensive radiation and chemotherapy, Bidlaire won't make it through January. We are trying to get an emergency visa or miraculous care in Haiti. Tomorrow, I take him to the Smile Train surgical team to see if they can do anything for him. Realistically, I think we're going to lose this one. And it breaks my heart.

As if my week wasn't crazy enough from clinics to cancer patients to the Ravine to the patients that randomly appear at my doorstep, I polished it off with the biggest youth group event of the fall. On Friday night, we opened the church doors to 126 teenagers for an overnight.

Usually the overnights include some singing, a brief testimony from one of the kids, and then lots of games and dancing. This year though, in keeping with our more serious trend, we kept things more God-based...at least until 1:30am. After that, who can do anything serious? Marc spoke at the beginning of the night and I spoke later in the evening. We also had a Q&A session where the kids could ask any questions for me, Marc, and the other adult leaders to answer. They are asking the right questions, the hard questions, about what it means to really believe, and it was fantastic seeing each of the chaperones add his or her wisdom to the reponses.

The best part of the overnight started at 11:30pm and didn't stop until after 1:30am! We brought all the leaders to the front of the room into a prayer line and called the kids up to receive prayer. At first, we called them by group, but after a little while, I released them to go outside and play if they wanted. Eighty kids stayed inside to be prayed for. I absolutely love being able to place my hand on a young man's forehead and pray God's blessing over him or to hold a young girl's hand and whisper God's words of encouragement and affirmation to her. It was a long night but a wonderful one.